I hope that you will take the time to look at these responses and offer your own thoughts. My own thoughts and analysis are at the end of the post.

Water

The long-term security of fresh water supplies is threatened by a dizzying array of aging infrastructure, aquifer depletion, pollution, and climate variability. Some American communities have lost access to water, affecting their viability and destroying home values. If you are elected, what steps will you take to ensure access to clean water for all Americans?

Hillary Clinton (D)

Chronic underinvestment in our nation’s drinking and wastewater systems has sickened and endangered Americans from Flint, Michigan, to Ohio and West Virginia. Outdated and inadequate wastewater systems discharge more than 900 billion gallons of untreated sewage a year, posing health risks to humans and wildlife life, disrupting ecosystems, and disproportionately impacting communities of color. In addition, many struggling communities around the United States have limited or no access to clean, safe water.

We will invest in infrastructure and work with states, municipalities, and the private sector to bring our water systems into the 21st century and provide all Americans access to clean, safe drinking water.

Climate change is also triggering changes in weather patterns, including the increased prevalence of long, hard droughts that pose a dire risk to the health and prosperity of American communities, particularly in the West. The federal government must become a better partner in supporting state and locally-led efforts to improve water security. To that end, we will create a coordinated, multi-agency Western Water Partnership to help fund water efficiency, consideration, and infrastructure modernization projects across the region, including significant new investments in water reuse and reclamation.

We will also work to bring cutting edge efficiency, treatment and reuse solutions to our nation’s water challenges by establishing a new Water Innovation Lab. The Lab will bring urban water managers, farmers and tribes together with engineers, entrepreneurs, conservationists and other stakeholders to develop practical and usable technologies and strategies that can be deployed by local water utilities, agricultural and industrial water users, and environmental restoration projects across the country.

Donald Trump (R)

This may be the most important issue we face as a nation for the next generation. Therefore, we must make the investment in our fresh water infrastructure to ensure access to affordable fresh water solutions for everyone. We must explore all options to include making desalinization more affordable and working to build the distribution infrastructure to bring this scarce resource to where it is needed for our citizens and those who produce the food of the world. This must be a top priority for my administration.

Jill Stein (G)

We need a national comprehensive water plan.

Clean water is a human right. The Green New Deal’s focus on infrastructure will help prevent future poisoned drinking water crises like that in Flint, Michigan.

Rejuvenating the federal Superfund program will help clean up the polluted drinking water of millions of Americans.

My Thoughts

For a topic as important as this one, each of the candidate’s response is remarkably brief. One of the most important topics for this planet is fresh, drinkable water. And yet, Trump offers nothing, Stein speaks of rejuvenating the federal Superfund and Clinton suggests two more committees are needed at this time.

Personally, I would like to know who came up with Trump’s answer that making desalinization work. It is a viable and feasible alternative but it won’t get fresh water to the interior portions of the country.

I don’t think that rejuvenating the Superfund will help with water problems. My knowledge of this fund was that 1) it deal with landfills, which may or may not have infiltrated water supplies and 2) it didn’t work that great.

Both Stein and Clinton understand the need for new infrastructure but there is nothing innovative in the solution. You can’t use generalities or superlatives when what is need are new pipes. And the one thing that we have learned from Flint is that we need new materials to make the pipes out of, not traditional iron pipes. Many cities are doing this at this time but it will take more than new committees.

Any investment in the infrastructure of this country is going to require funds and the question arises where are we going to get those funds? There has to resetting of national priorities that says monies for construction and innovation must take precedent over monies for destruction.